I'll tell you, we make some fabulous pies from the berries in our field and the fruit trees in our back yard. What we make depends on what is in season that day, which varies widely from year to year. Cherry pie is best with four cups cherry (makes a big pie), one cup sugar (more or less depending on the tartness of your cherries, but tart cherries make better pies than sweet ones), four tablespoons of corn starch, a little bit of lemon juice, a little bit of almond extract and about an ounce of brandy or whatever other liquor you have on hand. If you plan on preparing and then freezing your pie filling, don't add the extract or liquor until you're ready to bake because it won't freeze and you'll have a huge mess when your bags start leaking. Mixed berry pie is also fabulous. I like it best when the blueberries, huckleberries, black raspberries and a handful of red raspberries are all ripe at the same time. Throw them together coated with sugar, a small amount of lemon juice and some tapioca, and they make a fabulous pie. One year I had winter pears, blueberries and elderberries ripe, so I cubed the pears and threw them in with the berries and prepared it like a basic berry pie. It was pretty darn good, I might say. I called it Blue-Elder-Pearry Pie.

I love pecan pie. Maybe because I grew up in the South. The recipe on the back of Caro Syrup is good. Just buy fresh pecans, and use good vanilla. I make my crust with butter flavor crisco. Keep it really cold, and be careful not to mix it completely into the flour. I put the crisco in the freezer the night before and then cut it into pea sized cubes. "Cut it" into your flour. Use two knives, or a pastry blender - the thing with 5 or 6 semicircular wires mounted on a handle. You want pea sized globs of fat all through your dough. If you mix your fat (butter, lard, or crisco) completely into flour, you get cardboard. Put the dough into the freezer after you cut the fat into it, and let it stay in there for an hour, or two, before you roll it out. Put your rolling pin in there too. If you mess with your dough too much while rolling it out, put it back into the freezer to cool down before you try to roll it out again. If you leave pea sized globs of fat all through it you get flaky goodness. Drop a scoop of homemade vanilla bean ice cream on a hot slice of pecan pie. Heaven. But don't weigh yourself the next morning. I always wondered how they got the pecans perfectly arranged on the top of the pie. I was pleased to find out you don't have to arrange them, you just mix them in with the filling and they rise to the top while baking.

Thanks for all the tips and for being so specific in your explanations - I'm a "learning" cook and it's surprising how often recipes say things like "cut the shortening in" without really explaining what that means and why you do it. By the by, I too am a fan of Southern Pecan Pie and since I've left the South find that most pecan pies are what I would call "goopy sweet" and lack the smoothness and fullness of the pies I remember from back when. I don't know what the difference is but I'm going to try to find out how to make the old-fashioned kind.

Salmon pie, you fill a pie crust with mashed potatoes, flaked salmon (baked before hand), onions, garlic, dried pepper flakes, and parsley, you mix all the ingredients then plop it in the crust and bake it in the oven until the crust i well done. :D

Oh, also, tourtière, cubes of beef, chicken, pork, game, and potatoes, you garnish with salt and pepper and other stuff (not too familiar with this recipe, my grandmom makes it (my mom's version ain't so tasty =-/)) in a deep dish pie and cook in the oven until the filling is well done :D

I agree, desserts are better. But, really, you need to try one. Until you have, you can keep your 'racist' remarks to yourself! :P Plus, savoury pies, make a 3 course pie meal possible, three times the pie goodness. Even you crazy merry cans should see how good a thing that is.

Ah hem!! Deserts you say!! PppfftttT!! 1. Corn Beef pie 2. Steak 'n' kidney pie 3. Beef and potatoe pie All brilliant on a cold winters afternoon. Speaking of which, I must publish my "How to Eat a Beef Pie- Like an Australian" I'ble. A lesson that must be learnt for Down Under survival. It's all we eat. LoL

While I'm a huge fan of rhubarb, I think it does better in a crumble or cooked down as sauce rather than in a traditional two-crust pie. Something about the creamy texture you get from good rhubarb really needs a "mix in every bite" serving style.

I agree with you there, It should be a law that rhuburb should only be used in crumble's with custard. Oh and chuck some oats on with the crumble mixture, Oh excuse me I've GOT to go and make some now!

Joe and canida, you have obviously never had a properly made rhubarb pie. Sublime, delectable, heavenly. As I'm sure you know, commercial pies have a 90% or more chance of being sub-sub-standard. Even awful. A lemon merangue pie filling, for example, should be runny, not stiff. It MUST be made with fresh squeezed lemon juice. The merangue should be whipped egg whites. The egg yolks must go in the filling. A rhubarb pie must be made with a crust of cut in shortening (lard), not some mass produced goo. The rhubarb should be fresh picked and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces. CUT NO CORNERS to get the BEST pie! Oh, man. Pie. Oh, yes, if a pie needs ice cream, it ain't the BEST pie. The BEST pie stands alone. (No knocks on ice-cream, tho.)

It's a preference, That's yours. I don't eat pies unless there home made but there's something about the wonderful stringy, sweet taste and texture of rhubarb which complements a crumble topping perfectly, And then a dollop of nice yellow custard makes it complete. I find the pastry of a pie is far to much for something like rhubarb and makes the dish very heavy, However apples and pastry are one of my favourites.

Of course you are 100% correct. It is all a matter of taste. I would say tho that your rhubarb crumble sounds terrific. If I had most of these delectables before me I'd want to eat 'em all! I'm not fussy. cc canida ;-)

Don't listen to critics. The only pie better than rhubarb is lemon merangue. Very very close, though. The key to any pie that is worth eating is the crust. The crust MUST be made from scratch. The shortening (or for a truly unreal crust, lard) must be cut in properly so that when the crust is rolled out the fat and the flour are layered. This gives you that flaky, rich, taste. Of course the filling must also be made with fresh, natural ingredients. Whole lemons, squeezed. Oh, yeah, although I am a big fan of whole wheat, for a pie crust use the best, most fresh, WHITE flour you can get. I'll send a recipe sure to please. Rhubarb? Fresh picked is best. Leave out the strawberries! MMMMMM! Pie.

Sounds good, but I suspect a layer of some sort of pudding between the caramel would really kick it up. And hm, now you've got me thinking of using a layer of cajeta over the bananas, adding a layer of Mexican-style cinnamon and hot pepper-spiced chocolate pudding, covering with whipped cream and more spices with the grated chocolate.

I've seen some people use banana yoghurt for this, But personally it's sex on a plate with out the extras so god only knows what it would be like with them! I can see your going to have fun experimenting!!

Two days ago I made a mango pie. I'd never heard of it. I used two mangos, one really ripe, and one not so much, about 1/2 cup of sugar and some whole wheat flour. Next time I think I might add a bit of cornstarch because it got a tad runny. It was delicious though! The first pie I've ever made myself!